"You can keep your positive thinking. If you always expect the worst, most of life will come as a pleasant surprise." - Earp
It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life. - Captain Picard Written by David Kemper
“Ah, the patter of little feet around the house. There's nothing like having a midget for a butler. ” “Fell in love with a beautiful blonde once. Drove me to drink. And I never had the decency to thank her.” “I don't drink water. Fish fuck in it.” “It ain't what they call you, it's what you answer to.” ― W.C. Fields
I like to think of a mix of the two. I hope for the best and am not the least trusting person, but I do consider the world to be a good deal miserable and humanity very fallible so I don't hold my hopes beyond what you can achieve in such a flawed world. The way I see it you can acknowledge all that is wrong but to be constantly miserable about it so hurt yourself for what of a unachievable good. You just temper your standards with that realism, which isn't hard to do since all of humanity lives in that real world we aren't all that unrealistic.
I see your point, and I guess it's more of a continuum than just 'complete cynic vs. total Pollyanna'. I tend toward the cynical, but like to think I have my more optimistic side.
“If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed, and color, we would find some other causes for prejudice by noon.”—Senator George Aiken
"They should call themselves Cowboyz II Men." - anonymous comment on a Youtube video of a song by Country/Pop group Rascal Flatts
"Corner a man, and he will fight to the death. Imprison him in his own mind, and he will watch you burn with your house without a second thought. Inhumanity has a price, and though it is high, it is not worth the reward. A man cannot fight his way free from the confines of his own mind, but he can fight his fellow man for freedom."
"Time does not exist, clocks do." - John Fowles This quote isn't to be taken too seriously, as time does exist and clocks are a way of measuring it. I guess it's another way of saying "Age is just a number", or something along those lines. Still a very profound quote, to me at least.
The quote that has had the biggest influence on me and my outlook came from my mom. When I was 10, I was complaining about something, my mom slapped me and said "Fair is a place you go in the summer".
"I must soon quit the scene...." Benjamin Franklin in a letter to George Washington March 5, 1780 I have posted this before, but I feel like I need to post it agan. Indulge me please. Hunter Thompson said that living past 50 was just being greedy. Maybe that is why he "checked out" after making the scene so many times.
Which reminds me of another quote whose source I do not know: "It is no more reasonable to assume that life will treat fairly with you because you are a good person than to assume that a bull will not charge you because you are a vegetarian."
"I don't need luck; I have ammo." - Grunt from Mass Effect 3 That's the response people get when they tell me "good luck."
"So often I come upon articles written by critics of the very highest brow, and by other prominent writers, deploring the attempts of ordinary people to write. The critics rap us savagely on the head with their thimbles, for our nerve. No one but a virtuoso should be allowed to do it." - Brenda Ueland
" Do we have the capacity to make fire? Most humans have enjoyed that privilege since the stone age." -Ellen Ripley
"I sleep like a baby too. Every two hours, I wake up screaming." -Secretary of State Colin Powell, reacting to hearing that President George W. Bush 'slept like a baby' during the runup to the Iraq war.
New one I just ran into: “Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle. But these modern cowards are all crustaceans; their hardness is all on the cover, and their softness is inside.” G.K. Chesterton
